


Backupsmore

by genocideandgenesis



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Angst, Backstory, College, Fiddleford is good at math, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Gen, Mentions of Stanley Pines, Stanford thinks getting Bs is failing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-17
Updated: 2015-07-21
Packaged: 2018-04-09 18:28:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4359662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/genocideandgenesis/pseuds/genocideandgenesis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stanford's first year at Backupsmore University.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Backupsmore, Part I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stanford shows up at Backupsmore, drops his notes in the most high-school-movie way possible, and makes a friend, he's pretty sure.

Stanford Pines first meets Fiddleford Hadron McGucket when he trips just outside his physics laboratory and his notes fly everywhere. Fiddleford scampers to help him, gathering the disheveled notebooks and disorganized notecards and handing them to Stanford with a bright smile. “Welcome to the department!” he says, beaming. “We might not have any nuclear reactors, but this place is mighty fine! Sometimes there’s even free food!”

Stanford takes the proffered notes, tucking them under an arm for safekeeping, already feeling his face heating up behind his thick glasses frames. “Thanks,” he says. It’s not even his first month and he can barely keep his notes organized.

“My pleasure! Fiddleford, Fiddleford McGucket, and you’re the kid from Jersey, aren’t you?”

“We’re all from Jersey,” says Stanford, not a little bitterly. The university has its name for a reason.

“Ah, well, I’m not from ’round here,” says McGucket, scratching the back of his head. “Ma ’n’ Pa couldn’t afford to send me somewhere else, but this here school gave me some good money, so. So!” he says, brightening again as he realizes that Stanford is still in front of him. “Into the lab, then, there you go!”

Stanford disappears into the laboratory to the sound of Fiddleford whistling away behind him.

—

They don’t have much overlap in classes, because Stanford is studying life sciences, and Fiddleford whiles away most of his hours working on electronics, hardware, mechanics, things that click and move and have gears. Fiddleford spends a weekend cooped up in his dormitory trying to make a mechanized sheet-folder, since he can never quite get his sheets to stay on at night when he tosses and turns.

In spite of having little coursework in common, Fiddleford seems to make an effort to go out of his way to talk to Stanford, sitting at his table at dinner after discovering that Stanford usually sits alone, inviting him to the library to do homework, showing him the botanical gardens out behind the life sciences department.

Stanford finds himself knocking on Fiddleford’s door a lot, sometimes with genuine questions, sometimes with excuses to spend time with him disguising themselves as things he “needs” to know: homework problems he’s already solved, blueprints he’ll never understand but thinks Fiddleford will find interesting, terminology that is foreign to him but familiar to Fiddleford’s ears.

Sitting on the floor deep into the night with Fiddleford, talking about how their different sciences intersect, talking about their aspirations and dreams and the research paths they want to pursue, he almost forgets the sharp ache he gets when he thinks about the university where he could have been.

“I got into West Coast Tech,” Fiddleford says late one night, and Stanford can’t speak through the sudden lump in his throat, but it’s all right, because Fiddleford continues, “We couldn’t afford it, it was too expensive, what with my brother being in the hospital and my little sis on the way, but I don’t care what people say, I like it here! There are so many books!”

If he ever feels guilty about thinking that he should have been somewhere better, somewhere smarter, faster, a school with competent lab staff and state-of-the-art equipment, he consoles himself by thinking that if the world had been a little fairer, Fiddleford would have been at that school too.

—

He gets a call from home in mid-November, right before Thanksgiving. The kid is crying in the background, and his mom barely says two words to him before she passes the receiver to his dad, who grunts something into the phone about “better be the most successful kid in your class” and “I don’t want to see you home until winter break.” Nothing about Stanley.

It’s been a year, over a year, in fact, but that doesn’t change that there are two halves of a formerly dynamic duo, and even though sometimes he thinks he could look for his brother, he doesn’t know where to begin.

—

Mid December, finals week, exam stress in the air.

“You’ll do fine, you’re top in the class,” Stanford is telling an anxious McGucket, who is chewing on the tip of his pencil the way Stanley used to do if he couldn’t figure out how to spell a difficult word on an English test. They’re in Stanford’s room, because Fiddleford’s roommate has taken the opportunity of finals period to have a girl over.

“I’m not worried about that, I’m worried that I’ll just forget everything!”

“Nonsense! You’re one of the smartest people I know,” Stanford says.

“That don’t mean I test well,” Fiddleford says, distressed. “I have it all in my head, all here”—he taps his forehead with the tip of the pencil—“but I’m going to forget it on the test, I know I will—”

“Here, I’ll quiz you,” says Stanford, and he does, and Fiddleford’s twitching subsides, at least a little.

—

Neither of them flunks their finals, and soon enough it’s time to leave.

“It sure has been great gettin’ to know you,” Fiddleford says as they stand outside the front of their dorm, bundled against the December cold. “Can’t wait to see you again in the new year!”

Stanford’s dad’s familiar beat-up car comes speeding toward them, and Stanford turns, getting ready to leave.

“Congrats on your finals,” Stanford says, smiling, and means it.

“Thanks,” Fiddleford says, face splitting into a grin. He adjusts his glasses, eyes Stanford, eyes his gloved right hand. He grins. “High six?”

Stanford’s stomach goes cold, and it has nothing to do with the wintry weather. “I—I have to go,” he stammers, and flees to the backseat of his dad’s car.

—


	2. Backupsmore, Part II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stanford returns to campus after winter break. Fiddleford is a calculus genius.

Three days after New Year’s, Stanford peers around the corner at the family phone. It’s just after midnight, and everyone else has gone to sleep. His father is snoring upstairs, and it’s muffled enough to sound a little like his brother, when he’d get so tired he would pass out on the couch, shoes still on, drooling on the cushions.

The floor creaks as Stanford steps around the corner, and he cringes.

He is holding a crumpled piece of paper in his hand; he takes it out to look at it in the dim light. The number on it is scrawled in pencil, a little bit smudged from being stuffed in his hand and, earlier, thrown in the trash. He takes a breath, and sneaks up on the phone, reaching out for it with one tentative hand.

Stanford picks up the phone. The dial tone greets him, too loud in the after-hours dark and quiet of the family living room. Hastily he punches in the first number, just so the dial tone will shut up, but then he hesitates with his hand over the second.

He would have called earlier, but his mother had been using the phone particularly more than usual; she claimed to have more clients after New Year’s, and she hadn’t hung up until just after eleven, when he would have had to explain himself if he’d wanted to make a call. Besides, this was something he wanted to do… more or less in private.

He punches in the second number, and the third, and the next several, and then the phone is ringing.

Twice, three times, and right as he hears the telltale click of someone on the other end picking up, he slams the phone back into the receiver and retreats up the creaking front staircase to his room, where he sits at his desk tracing useless patterns on graph paper until sunrise.

\---

“Have a good semester, son,” his father says, depositing him on the sidewalk in front of his university with two boxes of new clothing, books, and his beaten-up backpack. His parents gave him a new one when he first started school, a consolation prize of sorts, but he kicked it under the bed first chance he got and hasn’t seen it since.

His mother and father drive away, and he’s left with bringing the boxes up the five flights of his stairs to his room.

Most of the other students are moving in as well, lugging suitcases, boxes, and backpacks up the flights of stairs in Wellyoutried Hall. Stanford doesn’t recognize most of them; he spent most of his time last semester with Fiddleford, and—well, he doesn’t see Fiddleford anywhere. 

Even though it’s January, he’s sweating by the time he arrives at the door of his own room. He knocks on the door with one elbow, trying to keep the boxes from falling, but after his second knock his door swings open and his roommate greets him with a smile as the boxes fall to the floor and Stanford pitches forward, landing face first on the ground. 

“Hey, kiddo!” says his roommate, who insists on calling Stanford things like “kid” and “little guy.” Just because he’s over six feet tall and plays on the basketball team doesn’t mean he’s any older or any better, just—taller. And, admittedly, more likely to win in a fight; Stanford hasn’t boxed in… well, a long time. A long time. “Or should I say, klutz?”

“Hello,” he says, wincing as he gets back to his feet, already pushing the boxes into the room so he can unpack them while inflicting as little bodily injury as possible.

“There’s a party down at Ken’s place, see you there,” says his roommate, and disappears without offering to help pick up the boxes. 

Stanford kicks them into the room. They’re books, books that he wants to tell Fiddleford about, if he can find him. 

He places each book on his shelf, straightening the spines and making sure they’re sorted by subject, and then by author. His back is to the door the whole time, but he keeps checking over his shoulder to see if Fiddleford is there, if he’s shown up to say hello now that they’re both back at school.

Nothing. He—well, he expected that.

He stops stalling, ignores that the last book on his shelf is out of place, and leaves his room.

\---

One knock, two knocks, a third for good measure. Pause. Knock-knock-knock. Waiting.

“Fiddleford,” Stanford says, “open the door!” 

There’s no answer, so he presses his ear against the door, listening for noises inside.

Nothing. No familiar tapping sounds, no metallic clinking, no banjo twang. 

Stanford’s face twists unhappily, and he slumps against the door. He knocks one more time, just in case Fiddleford answers now.

He’s met with silence.

He steps away from the door. He weaves his way down the spindly, winding staircase, and hurries back across campus, his eyes fixed resolutely on the ground in front of him so he doesn’t have to fake a smile at any of the passing students.

\---

Classes start the day after. Stanford shows up to the physics lab early, in hopes of recreating his and Fiddleford’s first meeting, but it’s only him and the empty hall. 

He waits until classes are just about to start, and has to run across campus to make it into the classroom in time. 

The professor isn’t there yet, but Fiddleford is, sitting by the window and sketching in his notebook, his knees tucked up against his desk, feet placed on the seat of his chair. He looks up when Stanford walks in, and immediately looks away, his mouth downturned.

The seats next to him aren’t taken, so Stanford steels himself and sits directly next to Fiddleford, who looks pointedly away.

Stanford opens his mouth, not sure what he’s about to say, and the professor walks in.

“Welcome to second-semester calculus,” says the professor, picking up a book from her desk. She raises it for all the class to see, and when Stanford sneaks a look at Fiddleford, he’s already fully paying attention, eyes on the professor. Stanford frowns. Fiddleford wasn’t in calculus last semester; introductory calculus is a pre-requisite, and he doesn’t know why he’s here. No matter, no matter. He realizes he doesn’t have his trusty notebook out, so he pulls it out and tries to take notes.

Halfway through the lecture, he stops listening to the teacher and writes out a message to Fiddleford on the piece of paper.

I’m sorry, it says. How was your break?

Fiddleford refuses to look at it until the end of the class, but when he sees it then, he smiles. It’s a guarded smile, but genuine. He gives Stanford two thumbs up, and when he leaves the classroom, there’s a little bit of a spring in his step.

\---

Fiddleford doesn’t ask for an explanation, and Stanford doesn’t give him one, and pretty soon they’re holed up in Fiddleford’s dorm room again, Stanford poring over textbooks, Fiddleford tightening screws on his latest contraption.

“What does it even do?” Stanford asks. It’s a mangled horror of pulleys, gears, and something that looks like a potato peeler.

Fiddleford shrugs. “Found most of this at home, figured I’d put it together into something useful, you know?” He throws it down on his desk. “Don’t think it’s much use.”

“It looks cool,” Stanford says.

Fiddleford smiles at him. “Thanks. Want to see what I was working on this last month? It’s a real treat.”

Stanford nods and leans closer as Fiddleford pulls out his sketches.

\---

“I—I didn’t mean nothin’ by the, the comment,” Fiddleford says one night. 

They’re lying together on the floor, staring up at the ceiling. Fiddleford’s roommate is out, again, so Stanford is unofficially spending the night, since it’s past three and they haven’t stopped talking in hours. And now this.

Stanford makes kind of a question-shaped grunting noise.

“The, the—” A sigh. “The high six. That’s what made you mad at me, isn’t it? Why you didn’t call, or nothin’?”

Stanford thinks of the number, scrawled on that piece of paper, hastily and happily written right before they both departed at the end of last year. “Call me, we’ll talk when we get bored between snowball fights at home!”

And he hadn’t.

“That’s not why I didn’t call you,” Stanford says, clearing his throat, realizing how gruff he sounds. 

“Oh,” says Fiddleford, letting the word trail out into the darkness. Then: “Is it ’cause you didn’t wanna talk to me, then?”

Stanford jolts up. “No!” he says. “No, no, I—no.”

“That’s a lot of nos,” Fiddleford remarks.

“I did one night,” Stanford admits, “but it was—it was late, and I… I chickened out.”

“Oh,” says Fiddleford. He leans over to grin at Stanford, wide and genuine. “Well, we all hafta be scared of somethin’, right? Me, I’m afraid of jackalopes.” He shivers. “Terrifyin’.”

“Fiddleford, those… don’t exist,” Stanford says.

“No reason to think they don’t! Have youuuu ever seen one?”

Stanford laughs, a little in spite of himself.

“We’ll go lookin’ for weird creatures tomorrow,” says Fiddleford, waggling his fingers to approximate how weird these creatures really are. He grins and sits up. “Do you—want to spend the night? So you don’t have to walk through the night with all the jackalopes?”

“There aren’t jackalopes,” he insists. “I’d be really afraid of the lizard-bears—”

In the end, he falls asleep sandwiched against Fiddleford and the wall, awake long enough to hear wheezing snores behind him, and think of how different they are from Stanley’s.

\---

Winter turns into spring, which turns into midterms. 

Fiddleford barely studies. “Calculus just makes sense!” he exclaims, having gotten an extremely solid 100 on the third exam this semester. “It’s jus’—numbers! C’mon, Stanford, I’ll help you,” he says, slinging an arm around Stanford’s shoulder in the wake of his less-than-ideal 89.

\---

It’s sometime in April that one of the girls in class flirts with him, or at least Fiddleford tells him that’s what it was after he’s accidentally rejected her (“I don’t like coffee!”). 

“That was clearly flirtin’!” Fiddleford says it enthusiastically, but he looks away from Stanford, doesn’t meet his eyes. “You, uh, you sure you’re not interested?”

His brother was always good when people flirted with him, but Stanford’s never been good with girls. Not that he tries a lot, or even cares most of the time, but it’s frustrating that it hasn’t come easily to him. 

“I don’t even know her,” Stanford says, still not understanding why she asked him out in the first place. His face is still a little flushed; it always took time for the blush to go away.

“Now, c’mon,” Fiddleford says. “There’ll be others, if you want! You could go after her and tell her, even!”

“People don’t just do that, Fid,” grumbles Stanford, wrapping his arms around his waist.

“It’s fine, there’ll be a next time,” Fiddleford consoles him. 

For the rest of the semester, there isn’t a “next time,” but between late nights talking, homework, and trying not to “fail” calculus, it doesn’t even occur to Stanford.

\---

Summer is a lot longer than a month.

“I’ll actually call you this time,” Stanford promises.

“Yeee-ah!” crows Fiddleford, punching him lightly on the shoulder, and then flinches away immediately. “Ah, sorry, didn’t mean—did that hurt—”

“No,” Stanford says, with a laugh. “You’d better send me blueprints for all your crazy machines!”

“Yeah, well, you’d better come back to me with proof that a jackalope does exist!”

Stanford sees his dad’s car in the distance, distinctly rolling through a stop sign. He looks back at Fiddleford. “Have a good summer, okay?” he says.

“I sure will!” says Fiddleford. “And you, too, promise me?”

Stanford nods. He holds up his hand, and Fiddleford’s face widens into a smile as he slaps it for a high six.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading this, everyone! :)


	3. Backupsmore, Summer Edition Part I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stanford comes home for the summer. Featuring phone calls, a bike, and parents.

It’s sweltering in Pines Pawns. Stanford is sketching the only living person in sight, a hunched old lady convinced she’ll find her sister’s wedding ring somewhere in the mess of jewelry in the front display. Stanford’s dad shows up just long enough to cackle dryly from the doorway, but then leaves Stanford in the stuffy, musty downstairs shop, sweat trickling down his neck, his hand sticking to the paper he’s trying to sketch on.

The lady smiles up at him. “Can you help me, sonny?”

“No,” he says, slamming his sketchbook shut, the pencil rattling on the counter. 

The smile disappears from her face, replaced with a stormy expression. “Do you want me to whack you with my cane? I’ve hit many a young man in my day, and you certainly couldn’t stop the wrath of an old woman! I may be past my prime, but I can still take you in _yours_!”

He doesn’t doubt it. “Did you find the ring you were looking for?”

“No,” she says.

“Then…”

“I’m leaving, I’m leaving, don’t rush people four times your age, _sonny_ , I’ll have your head on a stick by the end of the summer if you keep up with that attitude…”

She leaves and Stanford has just flipped over the _CLOSED FOR BUSINESS_ sign when he realizes that his dad is standing behind him, arms crossed.

“I am not impressed,” he says.

“Dad—”

“You didn’t even try to sell her anything.” He sweeps his arm to encompass the entirety of the cramped pawn shop, from the replica whale skull hanging from the ceiling to the cluttered collection of stolen mannequins in the back. “We have an entire store, and if we don’t have the ring—whatever. Your brother could have done it if he hadn’t up and left.”

Stanford opens his mouth, words springing up to defend his brother out of sheer habit, but his father is already turning to leave. He turns away. Outside the storefront window, he can see the orange glow of the sun setting over Glass Shard Beach. Since he’s gotten back from school, he hasn’t walked down to the waterfront, but he knows the swings are still out there, swaying in the breeze. He closes his eyes.

\---

“A handsome man? You want to hear about a handsome man? You think I just pull this out of thin air? This is an _art_ , you small-minded, selfish little—a _fraud_? You’re the fraud! YES, you still have to pay for this—”

Stanford’s mother has the phone cord wrapped around her arm, and one of her feet is tapping impatiently against the floor. She doesn’t glance at him as he slips into the kitchen to get some juice from the fridge.

“Seventeen-fifty is perfectly reasonable for all the time I spent on this phone listening to your _psychic drama_. Do you think it’s easy to hear about this nonsense about your husband and his lawn gnomes—”

He closes the door to his bedroom, which hasn’t changed much in the past few years. Even though they’d long outgrown Fort Stan, the bunk beds are still set up. 

Stanford can’t bring himself to climb to the top bunk and lie in the stifling heat. He flops on the bottom bunk, Stanley’s bunk, and stares up at nothing to the sound of the waves on the beach outside.

\---

“Hello, Pines Psychic Phone Services, how may I read your aura today? Ohhh, a young man! Do you need help with a girl?” A pause. “What do you mean, you want to talk to Stanford? Don’t you know this is a business line?”

Stanford perks up from where he’s sitting at the kitchen table, trying to finish the newspaper’s Yad eht fo yretsyM. “Mom? Is it for me?”

She waves her hand dismissively. “Are you sure you don’t want some advice? Your aura sounds dingy.”

“MOM!” says Stanford, jumping up, almost knocking over the chair.

“Fine, fine,” she says, “but make it quick, I’m expecting an important client later.”

It’s Fiddleford. 

“Your mom sounds like a lovely person!” he says when Stanford picks up. “Shame I couldn’t convince my mom to call her. I reckon she might benefit from it!”

“Fiddleford,” Stanford says, pitching his voice low, “my mom—” 

She glares at him from across the room.

“—is a great phone psychic,” he continues. “And… you should… have her call,” he goes on, as his mother nods in the background.

“Ah, see, she’d be scared t’ pick up the phone. My mom, she, she don’t _like_ technology much these days. Scares her.”

“How’s she feel about you, then?” Stanford says with a little bit of a laugh.

“Well, you won’t be _lieve_ what I started makin’ out in the back shed,” Fiddleford begins, and Stanford settles down for the conversation, ignoring his mom’s impatient, tapping foot. He knows she doesn’t really mind.

\---

It’s too hot to sleep, and he ends up down on the couch, flicking through the channels on the TV, standing in front of it to adjust the antenna when the picture gets fuzzy. 

“—then you need… the chamois of the future!” crows a familiar voice, accompanied by a face that Stanford knows all too well.

“Stanley?” he asks, incredulous, as if the image on the television can answer him. 

His brother is standing in front of an awful background, covered in dollar signs, and hawking a product nobody in their right mind should ever buy.

Stanford needs to know how to get one, immediately. He needs to know how to get _dozens_.

The reception cuts out, and Stanford spends the rest of the night flipping from channel to channel, just in case he catches sight of his brother. It’s just because he can’t sleep, he tells himself, and drifts off right before Stan Pines is back on screen, demanding, “Are you sick of this happening to _you_?”

\---

His father steps out at work to take a call, and Stanford shoves a hundred dollars into his pocket, flips the CLOSED sign so it’s displayed clearly on the door, and sneaks out into the summer afternoon.

Stanco Enterprises is Jersey based, and even though he knows it must be fake, he has to go see. Maybe—maybe.

He doesn’t know what he wants _maybe_ to mean.

He grabs his bike from behind the pawn shop and jumps on. The gears are rusty, but it takes him down the street, faster than the one last kid of the old middle school crew who shouts at him, “Hey, it’s Loser Pines!” 

Stanford scoffs at the familiar insult. He’s heard worse. He’s heard worse directed at _Stanley_ —

He pedals harder.

When he gets to where he thinks Stanco Enterprises is supposed to be, he’s met with an empty sales booth and a lot of broken pitchforks. Frowning, he picks one up. It’s made of flimsy wood and crumbles apart in his hands, leaving a couple of splinters in his palm. He hisses and pulls them out, then stands, looks around, and decides that if Stanley was here, he’s not going to be back. 

He walks the bike home.

\---

Late August, more humid than it’s been in weeks, no breeze in the afternoon.

Stanford is stretched out across the couch when Steve Pinington jumps on screen. “Are you sick of bandages that are hard to remove?” 

Their parents both jolt at the familiar voice, and Stanford scrambles to change the channel.

“Was that the son I no longer have?” his dad demands.

“No, Dad, it was nothing,” Stanford says, pretending to pay attention to the baseball game flickering in and out on the screen.

\---

That night, when it’s past midnight and he can hear his dad snoring upstairs, Stanford snatches his sketchbook from the clutter of his desk and sneaks into the living room to doodle. He leaves the television on low, so the voices are just a murmur, and sits a little closer when “Steve Pinington” finally shows up during one of the commercial breaks.

He wakes up later that night, three in the morning, drooling on his sketch of Stanley with a mustache, and tucks it out of sight before his parents wake up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Taking a couple of liberties with how fast Stanley's mustache grows. I figure if he's had a year to get on his Terrible Salesman Life Path, it's reasonable for him to be doing television ads. It was the '70s. Anything is possible.


End file.
